Environmental Permits Archives

In 2012, the Sewer Pollution Right to Know Act (SPRTKA) was signed into law in New York State. This law requires that owners of publicly owned sewer systems (POSSs) advise the public when raw or partially treated sewage, including combined sewer overflows (CSOs), is discharged into New York's waterways. On November 9 2016, the Department of Environmental Conservation's (DEC) regulations implementing the SPRTKA took effect.

On January 17, 2017, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) released proposed amendments to SEQRA - the department's first major revisions to such regulations in more than two decades. The proposed amendments follow recent efforts by the DEC to modernize SEQRA and are intended to streamline the process by, among other things, new environmental assessment forms along with the creation of workbooks and a spatial data platform on DEC's website (EAF Mapper). According to the DEC, the EAF Mapper "enables users in performing environmental assessments to access the same geographic information relied on by DEC staff.expanding the list of Type II actions that are not subject to SEQRA review."

New York City's lead-based paint law (Local Law 1 [1982]) requires landlords to remove lead-based paint in any apartment unit in which a child under 6 years of age resides. The issue in Yaniveth R. v. LTD Realty Co. was whether a child "resides" in an apartment containing lead-based paint when the child does not live in the apartment but spends approximately 50 hours per week there with a caregiver. The child, who was found to have elevated blood lead level at the age of one lived with her parents but usually stayed with her maternal grandmother five days per week while her parents were at work and did so since she was three months old.

In a 2-1 ruling, the Second Circuit reversed Southern District Judge Kenneth Karas, who had found that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) "Water Transfers Rule" was an unreasonable interpretation of the Clean Water Act. Writing for the majority and leaning on the EPA's reasoning, Circuit Judge Robert Sack wrote that the "Water Transfers Rule is based on a reasonable interpretation of the Clean Water Act and therefore entitled to Chevron deference."

The U.S. Federal Government and the State of New York jointly announced on May 11, 2015 a $12 million settlement with Tonawanda Coke Corporation for a litany of alleged environmental violations at TCC's western New York coke manufacturing facility.

DEC has issued its long-awaited environmental impact study for high volume horizontal fracturing, or fracking, in New York State. This document contains the state's official findings on the environmental and human health impacts of fracking, namely, that too much uncertainty surrounds the impacts of the process to proceed with issuing permits for fracking.

As in other areas of environmental policy, New York State is a leader in grappling with global climate change. Since 2009, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has had a policy in place that requires it to consider energy use and greenhouse gas emissions when it prepares or reviews an Environmental Impact Statement under the State Environmental Quality Review Act.

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has lifted a nearly three-year-old stay on EPA's Cross State Air Pollution Rule ("CSAPR"), a contentious rule designed to regulate air pollution that is generated in certain states and drifts downwind to others. EPA promises that CSAPR will create billions of dollars in public health benefits, but a number of states and industry groups maintain that the rule is too onerous.

The scales of justice are a ubiquitous symbol of equality and fairness under the law that date back to ancient times. One of the most common tools lawyers use to pursue the ideal of fairness and equality is the doctrine of equitable estoppel. Equitable estoppel works to preserve fairness by preventing bad actors from benefitting from their malfeasance. For example, if you knowingly misrepresent certain facts to the opposing attorney in a negotiation, and that attorney relies on that misrepresentation to enter into a harmful deal, she could later void the deal using the doctrine of equitable estoppel.

In environmental law, things aren't always what they seem at first blush. Hence, when the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, 134 S. Ct. 1050 (2014) in June, both industry and EPA claimed victory. Given that the Court struck down EPA's interpretation of its authority under two specific provisions of the Clean Air Act, how could EPA claim a win?

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